


Mourning

by jujubiest



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anger, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dean's perspective, Denial, Five Stages of Grief, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Finale, Post-Season/Series 12, Season/Series 12 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2018-12-10 21:11:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11699976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: There is no weeping, in the aftermath.





	1. Denial

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize in advance for this nearly-opposite of a fix-it fic. Break-it-more fic?
> 
> I'm still reeling from that season 12 finale, and I honestly don't trust the writers to do Dean's reaction justice. Even if they do, I'm no longer sure I trust certain actors not to change or omit lines to make it more ambiguous than it was originally intended. Am I salty? As the fucking Dead Sea, so this is my way of headcanoning around Supernatural's heteronormative nonsense.
> 
> No promises on the length between updates. My life is wild right now, so it'll happen as it happens.

There is no weeping, in the aftermath. No wailing or begging the empty sky for help. What good would that do? If Lucifer was ever right about anything, it's that God--Chuck--doesn't really give a rat's ass about any of them. If he did, he would've at least stayed to clean up his mess before fucking off to the cosmos on a fence-mending family vacation with his big sister.  
  
At least Amara had been everything she claimed, and never claimed to care.  
  
But there'll be no help from either of them, he's sure, so he'll eat glass before they hear him begging. There will be no prayers...and no goddamn eleventh-hour love declarations, either.  
  
He knows he loves Cas. Hell, he's been half-stupid in love with the guy for years and everybody knew except the person who needed to hear it most, the person who _mattered_. But he never said it, not once. Not even when Cas looked him straight in the eyes while he was dying and said it first, point-blank, no euphemisms, no hiding.  
  
And Dean? Had looked away, clenched his jaw against the words that wanted to pour out. He'd _felt_ the disappointment as Cas amended his statement to include the whole room, covering for Dean's cowardice even in his--what he _thought_ would be his--final moments.  
  
Maybe if he hadn't been such a goddamn coward, Cas would've stuck around after that. Maybe he would've been able to look Dean in the eye. Maybe he wouldn't have run off half-cocked and alone, over and over, trying to do everything himself and save Dean, spare Dean, avoid Dean, _protect Dean_. Maybe he wouldn't have ended up brainwashed by Lucifer Junior. Maybe he wouldn't have ended up _here_. Sprawled on his back, looking too small in his ugly trench coat. Cold. Empty. Wings burned into the ground.  _Gone._  
  
Maybe Dean is a self-absorbed headcase who's making things about him that never had anything to do with him. (With them.)  
  
But Dean never said it, so he'll never know, and now it doesn't matter. He'll hate himself for it 'til his dying day, but he'll be damned if he's gonna unburden his soul _now_ , to an empty shell, when he couldn't say it to Cas when he was...when...  
  
His mind retreats from that thought and its ugly implications. He can't accept it, not yet.  _Not ever,_ he think viciously. If he doesn't accept it, it won't be true. He can will Cas back to life with the sheer force of his refusal. He can believe hard enough that the natural order will have to listen.  _I do not accept your resignation, you stupid bastard. Wake up. Come_ back.  _Stop_ fucking  _leaving me._

The flash of anger fades, little by little, leaving a horrible, swooping emptiness in its wake.

Dean sits silently beside Cas, unwilling to leave him. Numb all the way through. He isn't worried about the looming silence in the house behind him. It isn't real. None of this is real. It can't be. It's a vision, some sick game Lucifer is playing, like the shit Zachariah used to pull. A ploy to kill Team Free Will's morale before they march into battle. Any minute now, Cas will open his eyes, zap them out of this pocket hell-verse, and explain everything.  
  
Any minute now.


	2. Anger

Dean knows the five stages of grief. With Sam for a brother, how could he not? Not that Sam would bring them up right  _now,_ of course. He knows it would be a bad idea. The point is, Dean knows there are supposed to be five.

So he must be more broken than he thought, because he's stuck on just one and he can't seem to get past it. It's with him every second of every day, in everything he does. It's with him when he closes his eyes and pretends to sleep until his body is convinced enough to doze off for a few minutes. It's with him when he wakes up with the shape of Cas's wings still burned into the backs of his eyelids.

He's so  _angry._

It's like a physical presence, and it honestly scares him. He's not sure he's ever been this angry before, or for this long. But he is, and it won't go away. He looks at Sam, trying so hard to hold everything together, so determined to believe they can save Mom and help the kid, and he just wants to tell him to stop, give up, there's no point. He wants to yell it at him until he finally gets it and just  _stops._ He wants to ask where he gets so much faith, where he gets off believing in things anymore when it's so clear that there's nothing in the world worth hoping for.

And the kid...god, he can't even look at the kid. If his rage has an epicenter, a central focus, that kid is it. He did something to Cas, messed with his mind and made him run off, and now Cas is dead and the kid is here, and that's not how this was supposed to end. And somehow, the fact that the kid seems to think Cas is his _dad_ just makes it worse; just makes him that much angrier. He sounds like him. He walks like him. Hell, he even  _looks_ a little bit like him.

But Dean can't see Cas when he looks at the kid. He won't. All he sees is thing that killed him. The thing he, Dean, _let_ kill him. All he can think about is that if he wasn't so weak, if he wasn't so  _human,_ if he had done what Cas told him had to be done a long time ago, everything would be different. Better. Sure, Dean would have another chunk missing from his soul, the burden of murdering an innocent woman on his conscience forever. But Cas would be there to hold him together, and that would be better than this. His mom would still be alive, and that's just...no.

He doesn't think about that. About the cold little wriggle of guilt underneath all the hot fury; that as much as he loves his mom, and as much as it hurts to know she's gone, it's also an old pain. A shallow tear on skin made thick with scar tissue long ago; he's lived most of his life without his mom, and if he has to, he can survive the pain of that again.

But this? Cas? That's a wound so deep it tears right through to the other side of him, surprising and breathtakingly painful. He didn't know it could hurt like this, because he's never lost Cas like this before. He's watched him die too many times to count, but there was always that ace in his back pocket, that quiet hope that said he could come back. And he did, over, and over, and over...

But not this time. This time there is no hope; the pain is full-bodied, sharp and final. It hurts to breathe, and if he's honest with himself he only keeps on doing it out of habit, and because he doesn't want to leave Sam alone in the world with nothing but that monster for company.

And because he meant what he said. He knows eventually, the kid will prove him right. And when he does, Dean is going to be there, his rage with him like an old friend, ready to strike the killing blow. For Cas.

And if that's not what Cas would have wanted? Tough shit. _Come back and tell me that yourself,_ he prays, before he can stop himself. It's a habit.

No flutter of wings answers, of course. The person he cares can't hear him anymore, and anyone else who's listening doesn't care.


End file.
